Dartmoor Gliding News – Sunday 2nd February 2014

Mud, Mud Glorious Mud.

Pirat at the muddy launchpoint

There was so much of it around yesterday that even our gliders have started to look a bit mucky.

Not that this was going to put Don off organising a full day for each of the hardy souls who braved the elements; his priority was to ensure that everybody learned something new during the day and so we had various bodies training to operate the winch, drive the Quads for the first time and retrieving their first gliders, ground crew organisation and support, operation of the radios and logbook - oh and of course a little bit of flying also.

Hail at 45 degrees. Main dry forecast?

With 2 instructors available to us for the first time in several weeks, a forecast for a largely dry day with a slight south-westerly breeze and a veritable plethora of willing young students available we had the makings of a good day ahead, and indeed flying started very positively.

The DGS Treasurer ( AKA Martin Cropper ) was last seen heading for the rainbows end

However, a domestic emergency for Martin Cropper meant he had to leave us for the day (rumour had it that his Aga had gone out and if he wasn't able to fix it he would have no dinner that night - personally I cannot believe this ridiculous rumour as Martin would never leave his post for such a small matter, surely?).  Special thanks go out to Allan Holland who stepped up to drive the winch for the rest of the afternoon.  We also suffered a couple of cable breaks, which when you only have one cable available has you at a bit of a disadvantage.  The most disruptive break caused the parachute to drift a couple of hundred yards into the next-door field and had me climbing a tree to disentangle it before we could fix the cable and bring it back online, which lost us another 30 minutes at least.  The forecast was a little bit inaccurate, especially the 15 knot southerly crosswind that caused people to be on their toes all day.

Don lecturing when the showers called a temporary halt to the flying

Roger Applewhatsit had a most productive day flying the Pirat for the first time, and once he had mastered the effects of turbulence coming in to land, declared that he had had a really good day, in fact the rainbow gods seemed to be smiling down at him between the extremely heavy hail showers.  Dave Parker kept up his currency in the K13 and very generously gave the new quad bike riders some useful practice in long glider retrieves.  When the rain didn't permit flying Don kept up his series of classroom lectures.  Mike Swann tirelessly operated the cable retrieve truck all day before finally gaining his reward of the last couple of flights before the light faded and by half past six in the pitch black all the gliders were safely washed and put back in the hangar and a very tired but happy crew departed.

Roger Applerecords waiting to launch in the Pirat between showers

Jerry Wellington